Well, being watched by human security personnel is not without its disturbingnesses, as people who are non-white, autistic, young, stylistically non-mainstream, or any combination of the above can attest. But that at least is curbed by the discretion and limited memory of mall cops.

As with with most privacy issues, it’s not the type of intrusion that’s new, it’s the systematic deployment. Like, you could always lose your job for getting in a drunken brawl or smoking a joint behind a dumpster – in that sense nothing has changed – but that becomes a very different thing if your employer can easily find video footage of you doing those things 10 years ago. There are lots of scenarios like that, many of them yet to be discovered, and even if they’re all edge cases, lots of people are edge cases sooner or later.

It’s almost like we value our privacy and the ability to make informed decisions, or something.

Well, plenty of businesses (Google, Facebook, Cadillac Fairview, Russia Inc., …] have placed a value on our privacy and making us unable to make informed decisions, so I guess it only makes sense that we do too.

Considering Apple, Facebook, Google and even your car track every move you make, including what you buy, where you shop and who your arguing with…while Samsung, and LG watch you in your living room through your TV, why do we care if the mall uses facial recognition software?